Today’s NYT ‘Connections’ Hints And Answers For Wednesday, November 20

Looking for Tuesday’s Connections hints and answers instead? You can find them here:

Hey, there! It’s Wednesday, and you know what that means: it’s time for another round of Connections!

In case you’re wondering, regular readers, yes, Scotland did beat Poland on Monday in an important football-not-soccer game. I’m very happy that results are starting to fall in line with our recent good performances. I just wish we wouldn’t have to wait until March for our next international games. It would be nice to keep this confidence and momentum going!

Today’s NYT Connections hints and answers for Wednesday, November 20, are coming right up.

How To Play Connections

Connections is a free, popular New York Times daily word game. You get a new puzzle at midnight every day. You can play on the NYT website or Games app.

You’re presented with a grid of 16 words. Your task is to arrange them into four groups of four by figuring out the links between them. The groups could be things like items you can click, names for research study participants or words preceded by a body part.

MORE FOR YOU
New Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge Warning—Do Not Shop On These Websites
Year’s Strongest Meteor Shower Has Begun: When To See The Geminids At Their Best
Don’t Hold Down The Ctrl Key—New Warning As Cyber Attacks Confirmed

There’s only one solution for each puzzle, and you’ll need to be careful when it comes to words that might fit into more than one category. You can shuffle the words to perhaps help you see links between them.

Each group is color coded. The yellow group is usually the easiest to figure out, blue and green fall in the middle, and the purple group is usually the most difficult one. The purple group often involves wordplay.

Select four words you think go together and press Submit. If you make a guess and you’re incorrect, you’ll lose a life. If you’re close to having a correct group, you might see a message telling you that you’re one word away from getting it right, but you’ll still need to figure out which one to swap.

If you make four mistakes, it’s game over. Let’s make sure that doesn’t happen with the help of some hints, and, if you’re really struggling, today’s Connections answers. As with Wordle and other similar games, it’s easy to share results with your friends on social media and group chats.

If you have an NYT All Access or Games subscription, you can access the Connections archive. This includes every previous game of Connections, so you can go back and play any of those that you have missed.

Aside from the first 60 games or so, you should be able to find my hints for each grid via Google if you need them! Just click here and add the date of the game for which you need clues or the answers to the search query.

What Are Today’s Connections Hints?

Scroll slowly! Just after the hints for each of today’s Connections groups, I’ll reveal what the groups are without immediately telling you which words go into them.

Today’s 16 words are...

• PLAY
• BAY
• STIR
• CHAIN
• TREE
• STREAM
• BARK
• RUN
• HOWL
• GARNISH
• AIR
• PYRAMID
• MUDDLE
• LADDER
• SNARL
• STRAIN

And the hints for today’s Connections groups are:

• Yellow group — don’t be quiet, speak pup!
• Green group — how to watch Netflix or listen to Spotify
• Blue group — some agents might prefer theirs shaken
• Purple group — ways that connected entities are organized

What Are Today’s Connections Groups?

Need some extra help?

Be warned: we’re starting to get into spoiler territory.

Today’s Connections groups are...

• Yellow group — sound like a dog
• Green group — broadcast, as online media
• Blue group — cocktail-making verbs
• Purple group — organizational structures, metaphorically

What Are Today’s Connections Answers?

Spoiler alert! Don’t scroll any further down the page until you’re ready to find out today’s Connections answers.

This is your final warning!

Today’s Connections answers are...

• Yellow group — sound like a dog (BARK, BAY, HOWL, SNARL)
• Green group — broadcast, as online media (AIR, PLAY, RUN, STREAM)
• Blue group — cocktail-making verbs (GARNISH, MUDDLE, STIR, STRAIN)
• Purple group — organizational structures, metaphorically (CHAIN, LADDER, PYRAMID, TREE)

No perfect game, but I'm up to four wins in a row. Here's how I fared:

🟩🟩🟩🟩

🟨🟨🟨🟦

🟪🟪🟪🟪

🟨🟨🟨🟨

🟦🟦🟦🟦

Seeing PLAY and STREAM close to each other helped the greens quickly gel in my brain. I wasn't quite sure what would go with HOWL, BARK and SNARL, though. I tried a guess with STRAIN and I was one away. Darn.

I stepped away from my computer for a minute to recalibrate and fill my water bottle (remember to hydrate!). As soon as I came back, I spotted the purples. I didn't think those four words would form the most difficult group on the table, but alas.

After that, I realized where I had gone wrong with the yellows. I got that group then the blues (which should have been straightforward in hindsight) to extend my streak.

That’s all there is to it for today’s Connections clues and answers. Be sure to check my blog for hints and the solution for Thursday’s game if you need them.

P.S. I quite like Paramore's cover of Talking Heads' "Burning Down The House." David Byrne returned the favor with a great version of "Hard Times." They make for a potent (and, more importantly, fun!) one-two punch:

If you’re so inclined, please do follow my blog for more coverage of Connections and other word games and even some video game news, insights and analysis. It helps me out a lot!